Women Entrepreneurs
Women Branching Out: Michele Lisenbury Christensen
So excited to have Michele Lisenbury Christensen of The Hot Love Revolution on the blog today.
Michele is a coach, love doctor, mama, entrepreneur, author, and more, and she’s on a mission to help happy, well-loved women save the world.
Michele serves up steamy advice to help couples communicate better, make more love, and discover and explore monogamy as the hottest place on earth.
Here’s Michele …
Tell us about you and your business. Where are you located in the world? What do you do and who do you love to serve?
I’m Michele Lisenbury Christensen, and I love love. My Hot Love Revolution is a community where I offer provocation – starting with the name itself – for women and their partners to create the aliveness they really want, in the relationship they’ve already got.
The people I coach and teach in my classes are more likely to wear funky boots or clogs than stilettos, but they don’t want to go through life without feeling turned-on and deeply connected. I really love working with sassy women and the nice guys who adore them… because we (Kurt and I are like that!) have some unique challenges and opportunities that are a lot of fun to unpack.
Oh… and I live in Seattle in the 1942 cottage my husband and I renovated into a Craftsman with the covered front porch and meditation room that I’d seen in my dreams.
Why do you think it’s so important for women (and men) to be turned on in their relationships?
Happy women are the heart of the positive changes our world needs. When a woman is depleted – when her heart isn’t overflowing – she doesn’t have the oomph to make the difference she otherwise could. Women’s pleasure pleases everyone. I want to do something about climate change, about human trafficking, about the quality of our schools, about food security… and helping women be nourished is my answer to all of those.
The same goes for men, too… but I speak more about the women for two reasons: 1) a man being happy doesn’t automatically make his wife happy in quite the same way. A happy woman makes a happy home. End of story. 2) because women are so oriented toward taking care of other people and looking after themselves LAST, if we don’t focus on women learning to be nourished, turned-on, and juicy, it won’t happen.
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What is one myth about monogamy that you’re helping bust?
The myth of either-or: either you can have security or you can have sensuality. This myth tells us that the hottest sex is with a “bad boy” or a stranger or some unnamed partner in your future… Not with the husband you have.
This myth says familiarity removes the mystery, and the turn-on along with it. And it says that when you turn up the turn-on, the security goes out the window, because libido is a wild and dangerous thing, like a fire hydrant that just sprays all over the place.
All of that is untrue. Our libidos thrive when we focus them at home and bring back to our partners the desires and curiosity the rest of the world might pique in us. Security can be verrrry sexy. And you can ENTIRELY rewrite the sensual, romantic, emotional, and communication scripts you’ve been reading from with your partner, and create a very dynamic NEW relationship with the same ol’ partner.
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How has your own experience with marriage changed your perception of monogamy?
There was a time between our 5th and 10th anniversary when we were practically celibate and I thought to myself, “I CANNOT go the rest of my life without turn-on, without feeling that aliveness and excitement of anticipation and energy and feeling so intensely desired and desirous.”
At that time, I thought time together and the build-up of resentments and differences and shared drudgery that are naturally a part of just about every marriage were the culprits, and that this process was natural. I was afraid I’d have to divorce Kurt to get what I wanted. I contemplated “opening” our marriage so I could be with other people, but he was not (as so many people – especially men – are not) open to that at all. Understandably. I’m all for customizing our relationships, but playing with multiple partners requires a ton of skill and is a meaningful risk, not to be undertaken lightly, especially when children are involved.
My perception today – having buckled down and said, “No, I will NOT go the rest of my life without that excitement… NOR will I give up on this marriage” is that marriage is a very powerful crucible for personal growth if you make those two commitments. I’ve walked through that fire, and continue to do so.
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What’s one we can all do today to strengthen our connections with those who are most important to us?
Behold them. We can get sidetracked by our to-do list, by comparing our partners and other loved ones to other people, by our own agenda of what we want them to do or become. But when we really stop and just SEE the magnificence of who they are (even though there are many magnificent things they are NOT), we’re awed, and we are also more available to whatever goodness and intimacy are there in the moment.
You’ll see your partner’s humor. Or kindness. Or methodical brilliance. You’ll see your daughter’s originality. Or independence. Or vulnerability. Or joy. Each of those things is a gift and begin with them – especially if you can then articulate what you see – deepens connection immediately.
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How has running your own business empowered you?
2013 is my 17th year in business. Business itself is an art form, and I am an artist of business. That knowledge is empowering. I have recreated my business many times over the past 17 years and I may recreate it again in the future.
I feel so empowered to have a career track that doesn’t require someone else’s permission or hire or promotion to go do what I want to do next. I’ve also geared up and back down again, taking my income to 6-figures plus and down to $50,000 last year when I had a baby. It’s totally mine to do with as I please and THAT is real freedom.
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What excites you most about the woman you’ve grown up to be and the life you live?
This sounds wacky to me, but the answer that comes up is the way that I’m softer and messier, in this grown-up, almost-40 version of me, than I ever was in my fantasies. I thought I’d be on this direct upward trajectory (a perfect 45′ angle!): more money, more fitness, more great boots (well, I do have more great boots!), the house, the kids… And it didn’t work that way.
My marriage was awful and I was miserable for a few years. We healed that and had a baby and were so happy. Then I lost a baby at 13 weeks gestation. Both my parents almost died in the same year. My business partnership fell apart. We’ve had money worries in a way we’d never had.
Life has put me through the wringer. And the result? I’m more tender, more compassionate, more vulnerable, more wide-open to the pain and the pleasure of life than I could’ve imagined 10 years ago. My ego’s aspirations were grand, but the reality of my life is even better.
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Michele Lisenbury Christensen instigates everyday sensuality using yoga, brain science, and candid tales of personal trials and triumphs. In the past 15 years, she’s co-crafted a playful smokin’ 12+ year marriage, had two happy kids, and been a trusted advisor to more than 2000 couples, business owners, and high-level corporate leaders around the world. Toe-curling pleasure on a daily basis gives Michele the rocket-fuel to serve and scintillate her clients and her readers at The Hot Love Revolution. She delivers daily instigations to more aliveness via Twitter and Facebook. She posts her favorite latest beauty on Pinterest, too.
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What are you going to do today to strengthen your connections with those who are most important to you? Leave a comment below!
Women Branching Out: Emmanuelle Lambert
Life coach and yoga instructor Emmanuelle Lambert is our Women Branching Out interviewee today!
Emma trained to become a yoga teacher and coach while working a full-time corporate job. Then, she left her corporate gig to devote herself full time to her own business.
Emma helps new and aspiring women solopreneurs – yoga teachers, coaches, healers, creatives – get started in their own conscious businesses. Her business motto is “Where the Be meets the Biz.”
Emma’s group coaching program Ignite Your Life!, starts March 4.
Here’s Emma …
Tell us about you and your business. Where do you live? What do you do and who do you love to serve?
Bonjour! I am a yoga teacher and life coach living in Brussels, Belgium, but originally from Dijon (yeah that’s an actual city), France.
I am passionate about helping women find what they’re truly capable of so they can design the life they want, without guilt or overwhelm.
I teach live yoga classes and coach either face-to-face or online (thank guru for the internet!).
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What does having a conscious business and life mean to you?
It means having a wholehearted/minded/spirited life and being in total alignment with one’s values, it means being aware of our stories and fears and dealing with them, it means finding one’s power and using it for the greater good, it means having a business as a means to full self expression and service. Oh, and having fun too!
How does being a yoga teacher influence your coaching business?
I believe yoga and coaching are complementary and can work really well together for a holistic approach to self development. I sometimes resort to yogic philosophy in my coaching.
I found that the philosophy sustaining the coaching methodologies I use is somewhat very similar to what I would broadly call yogic philosophy, but expressed in a different way, in different words. Depending on who my client is and what they need, I will use one of the other.
Actually, several clients told me they chose to work with me because I had this yoga background. They felt they would be seen and heard without judgement. Basically it means that if someone tells me they feel a lot of energy in their third chakra, I won’t cringe or start laughing!
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Why did you decide to start your own business?
I think that somehow, I’ve always known I would be working for myself someday.
It boils down to one word which is one of my core values: freedom.
Working my own schedule, choosing who I want to work with and what I want to do, that was a big deal for me.
Of course, I also couldn’t imagine doing what I do in a fixed structure. I am very good at having my own structure, and again, I get to decide what it is.
There is another reason: I do believe that it IS possible to create the life you want to live, and I want to be a living example of this. How could I teach and coach about empowerment if I’m not walking my talk? I would feel like a fraud.
I am not saying you have to have your own business absolutely and that you should quit your job tomorrow. I am just saying that this was how I always envisioned things for me, and I needed to have my own business, but that’s my choice.
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How has running your own business empowered you?
Oh man, it has empowered me in ways I could never imagine!
It has forced me to accept that deep down, I am a leader. See, I used to be shy and I certainly didn’t want to disturb, so I kept quiet for a long time – not to be seen, not to be heard, not to stand out. But deep down, I was not happy. Deep down, I knew I was not fitting in, and that there was more to life than this.
Running my own business had me digging deep inside to accept that I had to be seen and heard, if I ever wanted to be in business and have people come to me.
Whoever said that running your own business is the best self development tool ever was right!
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Why did you decided to create Ignite Your Life, your group coaching program?
I’ve always known I wanted to do something special, that I wasn’t really made for corporate life, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
So I settled in, got a job, and was unhappy for years. It was a fight between reason and heart, really: “Who do you think you are? Consider yourself happy. You have a job, a boyfriend, a roof above your head, what else could you possibly want?” (we’ve all heard that one, right ) “But I am NOT happy and I don’t know what to do!”
After years of soul searching I found out. It helped that I started practicing yoga, too. But it took me ages. Years of waking up crying in the middle of the night because I wanted to quit my job but I didn’t know what to do, and feeling so lonely!
And I know there are women out there who feel the same, who are suffering, who don’t know what to do with their lives but knowing they can do so much more! So everything I have learned and used is here, in that program, so they don’t spend that long in that painful state of confusion.
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Finish this sentence. I believe…
I believe that we all have the potential and power to do whatever we want and create the life we want to live – so screw excuses and go kick ass!
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When Emmanuelle Lambert tried yoga for the first time, she was a frustrated corporate employee and it wasn’t love at first downward dog. Fast forward six years, Emmanuelle is a fully self-employed yoga teacher and life coach. When she is not goofing around on her yoga mat, Emmanuelle can be found playing with her Krazy Kitty and her Lovely Boyfriend, jumping around to loud indie rock or eating dark chocolate – sometimes all these things at the same time. You can find Emmanuelle on Facebook and Twitter. Her group coaching program Ignite Your Life! starts March 4.
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Freedom is one of Emmanuelle’s core values. What are your core values and how does your business support them? Comment below!
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Women Branching Out: Amy Scott
I’m very happy to have Amy Scott of Nomadtopia on the blog today. Amy’s been location independent, living and working all over the world, for the last nine years. She inspires the nomad in me to dream of Airstreams and beaches.
Amy’s combined all her experience into an online course: Create Your Nomadtopia. This course will help other nomadic souls figure out what their version of an ideal life looks like and support them as they take steps toward that life. The course starts February 25.
This Wednesday, February 20, Amy is holding a free Q&A call to answer all of your burning questions about creating and living your own Nomadtopia. Click here to sign up.
Here’s Amy …
Tell us about Nomadtopia. What do you do and who do you love to serve?
Nomadtopia is all about helping people create their ideal life, anywhere in the world—their “Nomadtopia,” as I like to call it. This means being location independent or otherwise creating a lifestyle that gives you the freedom to live and work from anywhere, travel long-term, move abroad, and more.
My goal with Nomadtopia is to show people that it is possible to live this lifestyle, and to give them the tools, inspiration, and confidence to make it happen. I don’t espouse a cookie-cutter approach or tell people they should live their life the way I live mine; I give them the resources and information to find their ideal life.
Nomadtopia is for men and women who have this nagging feeling that they want more out of life. They love to travel and are inspired by others who are living a life of freedom and adventure. They’re looking for a way to do things differently, but aren’t sure how to put it into practice.
There are many websites and programs out there that focus on how to build an online business, and while that’s useful and important for many people, I’m more interested in the rest of it: What lifestyle is best for you? How much money do you really need? What should you do with your house? What’s the best way to set up online/international banking? How do you stay happy and healthy on the road?
What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about living a location-independent lifestyle?
Probably the biggest one is that you need a lot of money. But when you start to break it down, and consider all the costs you have in your “normal” life that you won’t have on the road (housing, cable, cell phone, commute…), you start to realize you could very well save money with this lifestyle. If you don’t move around too much, and you seek out destinations with a lower cost of living, it’s possible to live very cheaply. For example, when I quit my job in 2004 to travel around the world, I had saved about $12,000, and that lasted me for almost a year without working. And, for much of the time I’ve lived in Argentina, my expenses have averaged about US $1,000 a month.
Another misconception is that it’s too difficult or complicated to create this lifestyle. I’m not saying it isn’t complicated, but it’s not any more complicated than the things we often put up with in “normal” life. For me and many others, it’s absolutely worth dealing with the challenges of international taxes and banking, visas, insurance costs, and more, to live this lifestyle—just like other people choose to handle the challenges of long days at the office, raising children, or owning a car because of the benefits and joys those things also bring them.
What’s the first bit of advice you give someone who knows they want to shake up their current lifestyle, but doesn’t know how to get started?
Identify what you want to change in your life and why, and what kind of lifestyle will help you achieve your goals. (Do you want to spend more time with your family? Explore exotic destinations? Work less?) Focus on what you really want, and don’t just follow what everyone else is doing. I always tell people, there’s no right way to live your life, as long as it’s what you really want.
Then, break it all down into manageable pieces to identify what you really need to have in place to make it happen, and just get started. It can seem like a lot at the beginning, but by starting small and taking action, eventually you’ll get there.
What does your own personal Nomadtopia look like?
My Nomadtopia has taken lots of different forms over the years. It began in 2004, when I traveled solo around the world for nine months. I came back from that trip determined not to go back to an office, and since then I’ve started several successful businesses, moved around within the U.S., moved abroad, and continued to travel. I’m now married, and my husband and I keep a home base in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but spend much of the year traveling.
How has running your own business while living around the world empowered you?
It’s made me much more confident in general; I’m amazed when I think back on everything I’ve managed to do in the last nine years. In particular, this lifestyle has made me more comfortable with uncertainty. No matter how much you research and plan, there will always be things that don’t go as planned, and over the years of traveling and running businesses on the road I’ve learned that I can handle anything that comes my way. This allows me to go with the flow and not get stressed out by unexpected events, and it also encourages me to take more risks.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced during your travels and what did it teach you about yourself or the world?
Perhaps you were looking for something a little deeper, but truly, finding a reliable Internet connection is one of the biggest challenges of life on the road! It’s taught me the importance of having backup methods to communicate with people, and how to keep my businesses afloat even when I’m offline. But it’s also highlighted the importance of unplugging now and then, and of being present so I can fully experience my surroundings wherever I am in the world.
Finish this sentence. I believe…
If you embrace your dream, and focus on doing everything you can to make it happen, virtually anything is possible.
Where in the world will we find Amy next?
My husband and I are in Buenos Aires until April or so, then off to Peru (where I’m co-leading a retreat!) and possibly Ecuador or Colombia until we head to World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon, in July. Then, we’re talking about spending the rest of the year in Southeast Asia.
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Amy Scott left her office job to travel the world in 2004 and never looked back. She’s created a life that allows her to live and work from anywhere and now keeps a home base in Buenos Aires while she travels the world with her Argentine husband. Through her various online businesses she empowers people to reach their dreams, whether it’s becoming location independent or finally writing that book. Instead of prescribing “proven methods,” she offers tips, inspiration, and resources so you can choose the path that works for you—and then gives you the support and accountability you need to actually follow through. Amy is the author of Destination Nomadtopia: Discover the Ideal Lifestyle for Your Nomadic Soul and creator of the online program Create Your Nomadtopia. You can follow Amy’s adventures on Twitter and Facebook.
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Where would you love to take your nomadic soul? What can you do now to start heading that way?
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